Six Tamil Nadu Villages Will Soon Be ‘Smart’ Thanks to American NRIs Who Adopted Them

The NRIs are supposed to take a primary survey of the village when they visit, so that they know what is required to be done.

Six villages in Tamil Nadu have been adopted by Indian Americans, under the Smart Village programme of Global Network. This brings the total number of adopted villages to 62 in the country.

An NRI in San Diego, California, adopted the village Kandramanickam with a population of 6,325 in Sivaganga district. The plan is to now transform the village into a smart village.

“When I met Indian Americans during the ‘Mentor on Road’ project in the U.S., I suggested that if each of them can adopt a village in India and share their technical knowledge, my company will work in those places and turn these into smart villages in 1,000 days,” Jagat Shah, CEO of the consulting company, told The Hindu.

The adopted villages have a population of less than 10,000 and are mostly the hometowns of the NRIs who adopted them.

According the publication, most of the funding for the projects will come from Corporate Social Responsibility projects of companies located close to these villages and local bodies and under government schemes.

The NRIs are supposed to take a primary survey of the village when they visit, so that they know what is required to be done and what are the hurdles they are most likely to face. The six villages include Chinnalapatti (Dindigul district), Pudukkottai (Ariyalur), Parumbu kottai (Thoothukudi), Perumapalayam (Erode), Karaichuthuputhur (Tirunelveli), and Kandramanickam (Sivaganga).